William Sherertz, the chairman and chief executive officer of Barrett Business Services Inc., died unexpectedly on Thursday morning, the Vancouver-based company announced. Sherertz, 64, had been hospitalized recently for treatment of respiratory failure.
The board of directors of the company, which provides temporary staffing services as well as human resource needs for small- to medium-sized businesses, has appointed Chief Operating Officer Michael Elich as interim president and CEO.
In remembering Sherertz as a straight-shooter who had a talent for making complex ideas easy to understand, Elich said Friday he once asked Sherertz what he wanted his legacy to be. Sherertz replied that he’d taken the company public and had built it into a large operation, Elich said, so those important projects had already been checked off. “I just want to be the best,” Elich recalled Sherertz telling him.
Sherertz had been CEO of Barrett and a director of the company since 1980, according to the company’s annual report. He was appointed president in 1993. He took Barrett public in 1994. Sherertz also served as chairman of the board of directors.